I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to apparatus for automatically feeding flexible data storage diskettes, one-at-a-time, to a conveyor mechanism, and more particularly to a diskette picker device for unstacking a hopper filled with such flexible diskettes for entry onto the conveyor mechanism.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
With the advent of small, personal computers, there has been a continuing demand for application programs ranging from amusement games to rather sophisticated small-business accounting packages. Such programs are commonly stored on a flexible magnetic medium contained in a flexible plastic jacket and which are commonly referred to as floppy-disks. Because of the demand for these programs, an industry has developed for the mass publication of software on flexible diskette media. Equipment is now available for rapidly making copies of programs recorded on a master diskette, and these systems require the automatic feeding of individual blank floppy disks from a supply hopper to a disk transport station where writing and verification takes place. For example, in application Ser. No. 690,514, filed Jan. 10, 1985, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,571,645, there is described a machine for rapidly loading, sorting and collating flexible diskettes. IXI Laboratories, Inc., the assignee of the above-referenced application, makes a wide range of products which require the automatic loading and unloading of a floppy-disk drive as a part of its normal operation.
In the aforementioned application, there is illustrated and described a picker system 22 which is operable to remove the lowermost floppy-disk from a stack of such disks contained within a hopper 23. The picker unit comprises a motor having a picker blade coupled thereto through an eccentric. The picker blade engages the bottommost diskette in a stack and pushes only that bottom diskette through a gate to a diskette conveyor. In that prior art machine, the opening in the gate and the picker blade are designed such that the picker unit 22 can only operate with a single-size diskette. There are on the market, however, diskettes which are 3-inch, 31/4inch, 31/2-inch, 51/4-inch and 8-inch square as standard sizes. It is highly desirable that a picker unit be able to accommodate diskettes of each of these sizes so that the equipment involved can selectively utilize any of the aforementioned disk sizes.